Business Archives

Posted on September 14, 2019October 1, 2019 by Graham

Hey there! Not sure if you remember me but I’m the guy that writes these things. I had a good week and really wanted to pass along the things that are happening. I closed one project and started another at the beginning of the weekend. I also got an enormous amount of work finished. Part of that was on a new theme and the other part on HubSpot.

I started using HubSpot at Woodard and over a short period of time I started loving it. So much so I think it is a powerful part of outright and could be used with the service I offer to my client. I am therefore incorporating HubSpot as a optional feature that I believe will completely change any company that uses it. Not only will it improve outbound marketing project management but will also streamline sales and customer service.

Might be looking into their affiliate program too ; )

So the theme. Yeah. Pretty excited about this. I finished the framework for a theme. That included more than a year of work, even more time learning how to do it, a review process, and a few sleep depraved nights. I finished the review process on the framework and only had 4 bugs, all of which were easily fixed. The frameworks is humbly called “io” and will eventually be released into open source – much later that my new theme which I will market and sell.

I am extremely proud to announce Altimeter.

Altimeter will begin development in late September 2019. It is a simple and fast theme to incorporate a few features: social connectivity, a secondary post type, and a customized header which allows for user to change color of text/background/logo. The hard part is done and the soon-to-be release has me excited and tired. I’m very happy : )

Here’s the theme’s screenshot (shout out to SpaceX).

Posted on May 29, 2019September 24, 2019 by Graham

When I was 11 years old, I had an idea. I was walking around Sam’s Club (a new idea at the time – 1989) and something caught my eye; a large plastic jug with all the blow pops I could ever want. Enough sugar to get a sloth jacked up and twitchy. Each blow pop splattered in colorful plastic wrapping – I could almost taste it.

So the original idea was “They will be mine! ALL MINE!” which is expected from a 11 year old. Then, on the way home in our family van, another idea shot into my head; “I can’t eat all these, that’s crazy. Maybe I should sell them.”

What would follow became my first venture into business. I shoved the jar into my jansport backpack and tottered off to the bus stop. I proudly announced that I was selling blow pops to the 8+ kids gathered around the street corner waiting for their ride to school. By the time I got home, I had sold half of the jar and it was completely gone the next day.

The routine became habit and I quickly learned a lot and stashed the goods in my middle school locker. At one point my mom stopped me as I was counting all the cash I had wadded up. “Where did you get all that?” I explained that the candy I was buying from Sam’s was selling like hot cakes at school. She looked puzzled and shrugged. To my surprise my parents let me continue and I continued to make more money.

Eventually all good things come to an end. The Vice Principle caught up with me in the hallway and very nicely asked me if I was selling candy. I confirmed and then led him to my locker. He then took my candy and ended my business immediately.

At that time, I wasn’t creative enough to find was around the system. I dind’t pursue selling candy outside of school. I didn’t try to sell on the bus and hide it under a seat. I didn’t try a lot of things. What’s even worse, is I learned nothing from my experience. I just felt crushed.

I think back to that event to try and extract my mistakes and what I can do moving forward. I think the best thing I could have done was to keep going and continue selling candy. I also think I could have learned something about authority, but at that age, I was scared stiff of adults. Ironically, I sort of still am.

The silver lining of this post is that I still have something going for myself. I also love what I do and can really turn a website out in record time. I also like where I work during the day and find myself often joking with an easy crowd. Dad jokes FTW.

Posted on February 7, 2019April 25, 2019 by Graham

In the past, I’ve addressed (ok, ‘obsessed’) about project management and how projects should have flexible deadlines. Now I’m just giving up. I think something might have snapped (in my mind) at the end 2018 and there is no going back. I officially hate project management (not the people), project time tracking, and possibly even project management software (no offense intended). I’ve done some ‘reverse-thinking’ – which is basically asking what is the intent or purpose of something. Applying that to project management and I’m coming to the result of “management now has a time table of how long each project should take.” Which applies to some tasks or projects but definitely not websites.

Boom.

So much wrong on so many levels. But why is that wrong? Time management is not “wrong,” nor is it bad. Applying a scientific (in that “what worked for project ‘A’ will work for project ‘B’) theory (not theorem) to time management is horribly wrong because there are too many variables which are fluctuate in that equation and too many opinions. Separate teams waiting on each other / waiting on the client / waiting for fonts that are proprietary / has anyone selected a domain / what are we promising to the client … I could absolutely go on.

And I’m not here to complain.

By now you may be wondering about when I’m going to talk about fusion. Well here ya go. Fusion hasn’t happened yet. You can go out on the ol’ internet and read all sorts of articles about how company x has achieved “progress” with a machine they’ve built. My point is it’s not up and running in that’s what I think of time management in terms of site development. I’m continually trying to overcome this obstacle and when fusion happens, life as you know it will change dramatically. Just like the singularity. I’d like to take this moment to just express my gratitude and appreciation (maybe even love?) for robotics and AI – please don’t torture us for fun. But fusion, when achieved, will be awesome. It will revolutionize our electricity/battery problem. It’s clean, too. But it’s in the future and we just can’t use it now.

Maybe that’s where we are with trying to measure site development project lengths.

http://www.publicdomainfiles.com/show_file.php?id=14025264624720

Update: I believe I may have missed this point: Project management works as expected in a lot of other situations and I’m not trying to be negative to management or middle management as a whole. I especially mean no offense to the people in those positions.